Chapter Nineteen
Rielle put her hand to her nose as she and Eila walked into Azucena proper. The Port Circle stood a good mile outside city limits as was standard practice across the globe for such things. It was frightfully hot, hotter than Tierra Vida, and smelled like someone spilled every spice known to man inside Navid’s chili - if what the centaur made could even be called chili. Kaleo’s letter detailed quite a bit about Azucena and its people, the streets and what he did now as an apprentice of all things. To a bard. Rielle supposed it was fitting for her uncle to take on such a persona as she remembered him being quite skilled at music.
“Now where?” Eila asked as they stared at the monstrous fountain looming over all the mud-brick buildings that made up the city of Azucena. It rivaled Illurian City in size, butting up against the foothills of the Sierra Alto mountains and stretching out to the Campo de Arena - a vast dessert that covered a good portion of the Mahalan nation.
“Fountain?” Rielle suggested. “Something is making that gods awful stench. Azrus take me where I stand before that stuff does.”
Eila giggled, hooking her arm with Rielle’s as the two set off toward the center of the city. Many stared at them but they stared right back. Most of the women wore curious outfits that showed their navels and covered their hair. An odd practice. The twins wore tight trews and long tunics that made movement easier and, while Eila liked to leave her hair down around her shoulders, Rielle kept it in a tight braid atop her head - the only distinguishing factor between the twins according to everyone that knew them.
Looking for people was not all together difficult. With some well-placed smiles and a few bits of coin, information could be gathered from almost anywhere. They’d learned that when looking for their uncle and Aeron or when making quick trips into town to learn the local gossip coming in from the trading ships in Gavail. Kaleo was not hard to miss and, while he’d not given a name for the bard he followed, asking for a teal-winged apprentice would produce descent enough results in Rielle’s guestimation. She was, of course, not wrong.
“Ah, Senor Reven!” someone said happily, a portly man lobbing the heads off small lizards in the winding market. Linen covers strung across bamboo poles offered respite from the sun. Rolling curtains of the same bamboo covered what sufficed as windows on each stall presumably to lock them up or perhaps protect from the wind. “Si, si… un buen cantador. Lo buscas?”
The girls blinked at the man, unable to discern a single word spoken other than "Reven" which they gathered was a name.
“No…” Rielle hazarded with a lilt to her word that made it a question. “We’re looking for Kaleo. The apprentice. He has wings and teal hair.”
She made gestures of wings and tugged at Eila’s hair when speaking her cousin’s description. The man nodded, bringing his hatchet down on another lizard so that the head rolled off the wooden board to land at Eila’s feet. She stared down at it, kicking it distastefully with the tip of her booted foot.
“Why do you look for him?” someone said, making the girls whirl around. A girl roughly Kaleo’s age stood behind them, her hair tucked up into a loosely knitted cap like what some of the boys in the city wore. She had amber eyes and pale, if dirty, skin. “Do you know him?”
“Do you?” Rielle shot back with a frown and hip full of attitude. “Who are you?”
“I ask first,” the girl retorted. Rielle narrowed her lavender eyes, fists balling at her sides until Eila stepped in.
“He sent us a letter that he was here with someone else we know. A bard. Do you know where we can find them?”
The girl’s demeanor changed from curiosity to suspicion, eyes narrowing at the girls. She peered at them and finally nodded, jerking her head toward the foothills before moving onward. It was nearly impossible to keep up with her, dodging through people and vendors, even drunkards hanging over barrels until the city began to clear away to a path leading up to the foothills. Nearly a full hour later they stood before a giant manse with a replica of the large fountain in front of it. Two other women stood there with a drake, of all things, a chimera and a blue-feathered phoenix.
“Azure!” the girls said, running to the chimera where the phoenix was perched. The drake, however, snapped at them so fiercely they fell on their rears and earned the chimera’s wrath in return. Fionn was known to them, the creature snarling protectively at the drake while Azure screeched and took flight into the air.
“Stop!” cried a woman with cerulean eyes. “Malek, behave! You too!”
“The drake is hers,” Eila whispered watching the woman with wide-eyes. No one else moved.
“Of course, the drake is hers,” Rielle replied, standing with a grunt and then pulling her sister to her feet. “We don’t have time for this - where is Kaleo?”
“Gone,” the amber-eyed girl said. “Why do you look for him?”
“He’s our cousin,” the girls said in annoyed unison. They received arched brows by way of response.
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Eila asked. “Where did he go?”
“We do not know,” the girl said, folding her arms beneath her breasts. She was sort of pretty and rather defensive of Kaleo. Girlfriend, perhaps? Rielle looked to her sister with the question lingering silently between them. Eila shrugged. Perhaps she was. “He was here yesterday. When we return, he was not. Nor the bard.”
“You said he is your cousin,” the cerulean-eyed woman interjected. “You know Azure. And Fionn?” The girls nodded. “They cannot speak
